Get Off My Porch
by gammameta
Summary: Yet another Postpartings, but this time Lorelai's really, really angry.


'Get off! Get off my porch!'

'Lorelai—'

'I said, Get OFF my porch, Luke!' She was angry, yes, but more volatile and barely contained, and stalking forward, not quite realizing how she'd gotten so close so quickly, she found herself too close, he was too close, and she was just realizing that she'd shocked him into immobility. He wasn't moving, and that was exactly the opposite of what she'd been trying to do.

Fuck, she could do nothing right, just nothing right at all.

'Lorelai, I know you're angry—'

'NO!' she asserted, had to look down, trembling, at the ground. 'I can't do this now. I can't deal with you now. I can't—You have to leave. You have to go! GO!'

Chasing him was doing no good, either; he just backed up, pathetic palliative arm blocking, as though he deserved her rage. And he did, he sure as fuck did, and had no right to look so sorry, so broken.

'Lorelai,' he said so fervently, 'I'm sorry—'

'GET OFF MY PORCH!' she bellowed, like a child with her hands to her ears to muffle the sound, so that she could hear her jagged breathing and thick blood rush through her ears. She hoped that when she opened her eyes, that when she took her hands down and turned around that he'd be gone.

She was wrong.

He must have noticed. 'Are you alright?'

How could she be alright, when it was all so wrong, she was so wrong?

'Go away,' she bit out in a fierce undertone. 'I can't do this. I can't deal with you now. I am low and I am foul and I can't look at you, I can't talk to you now.' Maybe not ever, and she tried to find her keys, was dropping everything, fumbling everything, and when she stood, she found him even closer.

'I'm not going until I get you in your house, Lorelai,' he said sternly.

'Fuck you!' And hell, yes, she'd caught the 'your house', too. And hell, yes, it was her house, but shouldn't he have trouble remembering the pronoun switch?

He was much faster with the key, but she elbowed him aside, stomped in, slammed the door half on him, and she wasn't looking back.

'Where were you? What happened?'

Hollow laugh. Oh, if only. And she was just going to go, flee upstairs, and he could do fuck all in the hallway, could leave as she'd insisted, but he was following, and she couldn't handle that. Turned abruptly on the stairs, pushed with venom and rage and he staggered back down a few stairs, stared up at her from landing.

He looked confused but determined. Apologetic, too, fuck him, and it hurt that she'd loved him. Still did. Asshole.

'I know you're angry, but I've thought a lot about what you said, and we can fix this—'

'NO,' she hissed, scrambling down to shove him more, to force him to see this, eye-to-eye, 'there's no fixing this. It's done, it's over, finis, finito, hasta la vista, baby. OVER!'

'No, I'm sorry! Look—'

'Go! I said GET OUT! Why won't you just get the fuck out of my house?' And at his steady regard, 'Do I have to send a candygram, buy a billboard or a blimp, write it out in huge letters in the sky?' Why wasn't he leaving? She wasn't joking. Why couldn't he see how hopeless this all was?

'I think we can fix this,' he spoke quietly. 'I want to marry you. We'll get married. I'll—tell me what to do to make this work.'

'I don't want to marry you.'

'Last night,' and he halted and stopped, his whole manner hardening, changing, 'Last night you said you did.'

'That…was last night..' When he'd ripped out her fucking heart, when she'd poured it out for him, and yes, she'd been a little nuts, but his reaction…his reaction had been everything she'd ever feared. Nothing. Zero.

'And so, what? You changed your mind in the space of one night?' He crossed his arms, hunkered down—superior Luke. 'How could I forget—the changeable Lorelai?'

She didn't know why, but she had absolutely no reaction to that comment—she knew the truth of what she felt. And she'd known for longer than a night that the problem didn't lie with her not caring enough; it lay with him.

His eyes when he turned them on her were hard now. 'Where were you last night?'

She shrugged. 'With Christopher.'

The sneer disappeared slowly, there was a flash of shock. Then just rage, a match to her own.

'You slept with Christopher!' he spat out, and that, even more than his non-reaction last night, confirmed everything about him that was bad for her. Because she hadn't said that, didn't owe him that, and only had to feel low on her own account because it was true.

She laughed again, because it mattered so little, that he thought this way, laughed because it mattered so little to her, such a small part, really, of the pain she was feeling. She laughed and turned away.

He grabbed her arm, slammed it and her into the wall. 'You fucked Christopher last night?' His cruel grey eyes and flash of grim teeth, hot breath, and she'd never thought of Luke as a terribly violent guy, but it was there.

'Get off me.'

'You went straight from my arms to his?'

'No, Luke, I haven't been in your arms for some time now. It's been weeks.' And with a quick, contemptuous shove, she shook him off. 'And when I went to you last night, it just confirmed what we have been for quite some time—over.'

'That's a really convenient memory, but then you've always been good at lying to yourself, thinking of yourself first.'

'I said now or never, Luke. You chose never.'

'You didn't leave me much of a choice, Lorelai. You unloaded all that on me, ranting like a mad woman, acted crazy and then left—'

'You didn't come after me. You didn't say you loved me. You let me walk away, just like you've let me drift away. I did not go straight from your arms to his. I tried one last shot with you. Then I went to him.'

'You've been waiting for him this whole time,' he sneered, and his gaze traveled up and down her body impudently. 'Fine. Fuck your pretty boy. Make your parents happy. Live the goddamn rich lifestyle that everyone wants you to. But I hope Christopher knows what he's getting, because you never commit, and you run away. And you won't ever be faithful to—'

'You don't get to judge me! You don't get to call me a whore, or comment on my love life, or have any opinion whatsoever! We're over, it's my business, and you don't get to tell me how to get over you! You don't get to judge me for how I deal with it. You don't have the right—'

'I have every right. You were engaged to ME.'

'A fiancé you didn't want, were never going to marry. You forget that I know you, Luke. I've seen you do this before—right before the end. Rachel and Nicole, they left because they could see. Early openings at the diner, excuses not to be there, keeping private the important things in your life.'

'Now you're blaming all this on a twelve-year-old. My daughter, Lorelai…You're blaming the fact that you fell into Christopher's bed on my daughter!'

'I was in. I was all in. And everyone in town was telling me not to hurt you. Me!'

'What do you call sleeping with Christopher?'

'I call that hurting me. Self-destructive behavior, abusive habits and patterns. Run to Christopher when I'm hurting, run to him when no one loves me. Because you know, what Luke? He always does, even if it's wrong, even when I'm wrong, and I'm hurting him, too.'

'I can never forgive you for this,' he stepped away, always superior, always cold Luke.

'Feel betrayed, if you want to, Luke. You're really good at blaming the women who leave you, when you're doing everything possible to push them away.' That clenched jaw was so hard and unforgiving, but it was his eyes that were glowing with the light of self-righteousness—made her laugh. 'I have new compassion for the sock man.'

'LORELAI—' and punched the wall right near her head. Somehow that wasn't as scary, today, as it might otherwise have been.

'I never want to see you again. I don't know if I can stand to live in this town again. I—' and now the tears were coming, 'I loved you. I was all in—so get out of my house and off my porch. Just go, back to your diner, back to April. Turns out you make a better son and father than a husband or lover.'

His eyes were black and rich with indignity and loathing, jealousy and anger, but after a moment, he did go, clomping down the stairs, slamming the door so it bounced. And she tried to remember it was everything she wanted. He was off her porch, at least.


End file.
